My mother was a secondary school teacher, and roughly 15-20 years ago I was reading a book of hers that involved a classroom game or experiment or lesson where each child in the class followed a set of individual instructions, passing information around to other kids and making decisions and so on. The net result of all of this was that the whole classroom would end up effectively running a program to play a game - I *think* it was noughts and crosses, but it was a reasonably complex program with maybe 20 separate sets of instructions for different people. [more inside]
posted by xiw
on Mar 7, 2015 -
1 answer

So, I just got promoted to a new position at my company (Yay!). Unfortunately, the new requirements involve scheduling a ridiculous number of people. It turns out my predecessor has just been doing dozens of iterations manually until one kind of worked, but every slight change puts a bunch of other things out of wack.
I feel like Excel could probably be capable of doing it, but I have no idea how I would go about designing such a spread sheet. [more inside]
posted by cacofonie
on Jun 19, 2014 -
17 answers

I like playing around with text recognition algorithms, but am stymied by a lack of a good corpus to train and test my code against. I'm looking for a large number of images of individual printed letters, labelled with the correct letter. (With the letter in the file name, or each set of letters in a directory, or something equivalent like a metadata file.) Something like this, but more of it.
posted by Zarkonnen
on Jan 16, 2014 -
3 answers

I'm writing a simple simulator with python and I would like to be able to have my users log in to the simulator over the internet and change their own set of variables. [more inside]
posted by millerizer
on May 22, 2013 -
14 answers

For basically my whole teen-to-adult life I have wanted to write AI for video games as a hobby. Mostly games of the overhead strategy type, think Red Alert, Warcraft (not World Of), Starcraft and so forth. [more inside]
posted by RustyBrooks
on Mar 27, 2013 -
6 answers

Hi
I have programmed on eclipse, a reasonably straightforward program in Python 2.7 that applies image filters to user selected images e.g. by turning them to sepia, black & white, negative, etc. It uses Tkinter for the graphics user interface and the program functions ok. However, I was thinking about how to turn this into a web app. So to transfer this to an Amazon cloud server, I understand that for the client side user interface I would need to convert the program by adding html and javascript to the client side while python handles the server side? Does anyone know of any tutorials or other resources that are particularly good at covering web apps like this using python, html and javascript?
posted by conrad101
on Sep 19, 2012 -
3 answers

Some tech blogger - probably one with a Mac focus - wrote a post about leaving TextMate for a different text editor, in the style of someone addressing a person with whom they were ending a romantic relationship. Can you help me find it?
posted by Egg Shen
on Jul 27, 2012 -
4 answers

I would like to get a new job in Chicago. What are some things I can do over the summer to maximize my odds at finding employment in the windy city? My field is software engineering. [more inside]
posted by Green With You
on Apr 23, 2012 -
8 answers

Programmingfilter: I created a program to output Pascals Triangle in Java (in Arrays). How can i change the shape of the output from a Rightsided triangle into a (typical for a Pascals Triangle) Isoceles shape? [more inside]
posted by freddymetz
on Nov 23, 2011 -
9 answers

I have a B.S. in Math, but I haven't been able to find a job in my field. What can I add to my undergrad degree to be more competitive in the job market? [more inside]
posted by ZeroDivides
on Sep 21, 2011 -
12 answers

I'm wondering about what measures can be taken to increase gender diversity in male-dominated workplaces. For women who work in male-dominated fields - how did your company's culture contribute to creating an appealing work environment for you? What can be done to build and foster this kind of culture? [more inside]
posted by remixnine
on Sep 11, 2011 -
25 answers

I want to develop a browser toolbar button which leads people to content related to what they are reading in their browser. I need some help understanding how complex this project is.... [more inside]
posted by london302
on Jun 22, 2011 -
8 answers

What was the first computer operating system to use device drivers as we would recognize them today? Bonus question: when was that specific term first used?
posted by idiopath
on Jun 14, 2011 -
14 answers

What's the best way to do a complete clone/copy/export/duplicate/mirror/whatever of an Eclipse-based development environment and move it to another PC? [more inside]
posted by nmaster64
on Mar 16, 2011 -
4 answers

This question made me start thinking about learning computer programming. Two questions: do you think there's any value in doing so, and if so, how would I start? Details about me inside. [more inside]
posted by insectosaurus
on Jun 29, 2010 -
13 answers

I'm looking to write a graphical front-end for a text-based data fitting and plotting program. Is it better to program an interface from scratch or write an extension for a plotting program such as Igor, Origin, Mathematica, etc.? [more inside]
posted by Aanidaani
on Feb 12, 2010 -
3 answers

I have two large (10k-100k) sets of strings. I want to match the items in the sets up in pairs based on similarity. Levenshtein looks promising but costly. [more inside]
posted by chairface
on Feb 12, 2010 -
15 answers

I am a graduate student who works with a lot of very computationally sophisiticated people. I'm doing okay with the content of my work (which is focused on computational modeling only to a certain degree) and feel comfortable acquiring new high-level skills. But there are a lot of basic skills, vocabulary, and background knowledge that I don't have, and it's slowing me down! What do I need to know, and how do I learn it efficiently? [more inside]
posted by anonymous
on Jan 22, 2010 -
6 answers

[Software Development filter] I am working on a project that uses a PC (Windows) and a dedicated microprocessor to perform a specific task. I want to create a scripting language that will allow the user to write their own sequences for the tool. [more inside]
posted by Drasher
on Dec 22, 2009 -
27 answers

Should I go back to school and take some computer programming classes? I've got my MLIS and work in Archives now, I'm sorta interested in Content Management but I have no useable computer knowledge. Would an introductory course help me see where my strenghts are and what I might possibly be good at? I'm not sure where to go from just having my Master's on top of the fact that I'm not sure I want to stay in the Archives field. I'm more interested in Records Management but I know I lack a lot of the tech experience
posted by Mis-Information
on Aug 25, 2009 -
7 answers

When designing a programming project, what is the usual method for imposing speed requirements, such as "function X must accomplish so-and-so in 2 seconds or less"? The problem here of course is that all computers run programs at a different speeds.
posted by crapmatic
on Jun 10, 2009 -
19 answers

Teach me how to program a robot for my upcoming programming competition! I'm looking for tips, tricks, and sources of inspiration to help write an awesome AI. [more inside]
posted by theiconoclast31
on May 3, 2009 -
7 answers

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